Guest Blogger: Edward Vallance

Scott asked me for my top five British radicals. I should point out this is a completely subjective list. I am not saying that these are the top five, they are just my favourites. Ok, cue Paul Hardcastle's 'The Wizard':

1. Robert Kett - our first Norfolk radical of the five and one of history's genuine good guys. Kett was a wealthy yeoman farmer but instead of fighting locals who, in 1549, came to knock down the hedges of his enclosed fields in Wymondham, Kett joined in and shortly afterwards led them in a rebellion against oppression and exploitation by local landowners. The rebels' key demand that 'all bond men be made free' resonates to this day and though the rebellion was ultimately crushed - Kett was hanged from the walls of Norwich castle - he is still rightly remembered in his native county as a popular hero.

2. Tom Paine - another Norfolk native. Paine was born in 1737 in Thetford, the son of a humble stay-maker (corset manufacturer). Paine is best known as the staunch advocate of American independence (he emigrated to the New World in 1774) and for his republican polemic, Rights of Man (1791 and 1792). In his lifetime, Paine provoked wildly differing public reactions: his works were runaway bestsellers but he was also a popular hate figure with his effigy hanged and burnt in towns across the country. Today, his works continue to inspire: Barack Obama used the words of Paine's The American Crisis to close his inaugural address.

3. Edith Rigby - not the best known of the militant suffragettes but anyone who chose to attack a Labour MP with a black pudding deserves some notice. Rigby, from a respectable if poor middle-class Preston family also committed more serious acts of militancy. In 1913 she planted a bomb in the Liverpool Exchange building but it did not go off. Three days later she set fire to the holiday home of the local soap-baron Sir William Lever. She was imprisoned for arson and immediately began a hunger strike. Released due to poor health she fled the country but eventually returned to Preston in mid-1914. A doughty flouter of convention, Rigby preferred wearing men's clothes to women's and was reputedly the first woman in Preston to ride a bicycle.

4. Henry Hunt - 'Orator' Hunt, as he was known, provided the model for many later nineteenth century radical leaders, most notably the Chartist Feargus O'Connor. A gentleman farmer who converted to radical politics relatively late in life, Hunt was known for his physical stature, his stentorian voice and his trademark white hat. The leading figure in British popular radicalism in the years after Waterloo, Hunt was imprisoned in the wake of the Peterloo massacre of August 1819. However, while in gaol he fared rather better than other less well-known reformers incarcerated after the atrocity, dining on turbot, supping wine and gin and enjoying piano recitals by his ward Miss Grey. Hunt continued his radical activities after his release, promoting his radical 'breakfast powder', a nutritious start to the day which had the added benefit of being untaxed and which, therefore, did not support the unreformed government.

5. Mary Wollstonecraft - often cited as the first feminist writer, Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was, for its time, an extraordinarily bold statement in favour of the fundamental equality of the sexes. Wollstonecraft was deeply opposed to the institution of marriage, viewing the marriage market as something which encouraged women to be little more than attractive adornments and which subjugated women's wills and identities to those of their husband's. However, Wollstonecraft would later become one half of the most famous British radical couple in history when she married the political philosopher, novelist and historian William Godwin in 1797. Tragically, Wollstonecraft died as a result of complications following the birth of their daughter, Mary that year.

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Nothing like a bit of political and social radicalism to start the week. Many thanks to Ted for this guest post. His latest book is A Radical History of Britain and, having started to read it, I can report that it is an accessible and highly entertaining read. I will be reviewing it in full shortly.

Oh, and Ted's blog can be found here.

Comments

[Juxtabook]

What a great list. I would have included Wollstonecraft and Kett too. Never heard of Edith Rigby but the black pudding stunt sounds good.

[Ned Ludd]

I wonder if there is a recipe for radical breakfast powder anywhere? It sounds as if it might actually taste rather good! and it would still be politically radical to replace the products of Nestle... come to think of it, Hunt may have been the inventor of 'fair trade' !